I'm a scientist at the Library of Congress working on a pre-play (minimally
invasive) identification method for sticky/degraded magnetic tape.  I have a
few of the very common quarter-inch tapes Ampex 406, 456, Scotch 201, 207,
and 808, but to validate the method, I'm hoping to find in-kind offerings of
any of the following (or others you know of that are known to degrade):

(1/4")
Agfa PEM-468, 469, 526
Ampex 373, 406, 407, 456, 457, 499, 2020
Audiotape/Capitol Q15
EMTEC SM911
Melody 169
Scotch/3M Classic, Master-XS, 175, 201, 250, 806-9,
       908, 966, 967, Pro-206, 207, 226, 227, 808, 986
Sony - PR-150, FeCr, SLH, ULH-72-370-BL
TDK 150H


Because of the ease of confusion of boxes, hubs, reels, tapes after opening,
only unopened/sealed tapes are useful.
If you're interested in helping but want the tapes returned to you, I can do
that as well.  Otherwise, we will keep them as part of our test collection.

The method: Uses IR spectroscopy and multi-variate statistical analysis to
differentiate degraded and non-degraded magnetic tapes: see "Report on
Research and Testing of Audiovisual Media at the Library of Congress" from
2012 ARSC and IRUG Conference 2012, Barcelona).  Using the Library's
collection - testing 100 tapes from the 1970-1990's, we've been able to
accurately identify 98% of the time which polyester-urethane tapes are
degraded or not using IR spectroscopy.

Please don't hesitate to contact me.  The LC should be able to pay for
shipping...

Thank you kindly -
Eric Breitung
Chemist
Library of Congress
Preservation Research and Testing Division
ebre at loc dot gov